


Rewired his Last Calcinator

by Marzarelo



Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, hux comic spoilers, hux comic tie-in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 22:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20443820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marzarelo/pseuds/Marzarelo
Summary: It seems a Radar Technician attempted to assassinate Hux via sabotage.  Hux is (pretty sure) he dealt with him.





	Rewired his Last Calcinator

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a rush yesterday after reading the Hux comic. I was excited that they included the little reference to Matt the Radar Technician, but I couldn't resist coming up with a scenario wherein Matt may have escaped.

Calcinators. Matt was sick and tired of them. He’d probably spent more than a year of his life just replacing and rewiring them at this point, and if he never saw another one as long as he lived he wouldn’t be sorry. _All thanks to General-kriffing-Hux_.

If only he hadn’t struggled so much with Calcinators in the beginning. He still remembered the day, when he’d finally screwed up one too many times. Too many failures, and finally the reports of his poor performance reached the General himself. His palms had been sweating when he stood in front of Hux’s desk while the General perused his performance reports, noting his issues with Calcinators in particular. When asked what the problem was, he’d only managed to stammer “I just can’t get the hang of them, sir.” _Such a pathetic kriffing excuse_.

He hadn’t understood, at the moment, why it sent a chill down his spine when Hux replied “Well, practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?” with a patient, fatherly smile. It seemed like it should be a relief. Hux was being merciful. He wasn’t being punished or sent to reconditioning, he was just going to be assigned Calcinator jobs for a while until he got it right. But something about Hux’s demeanor made a voice in the back of his head scream _wrong, wrong, wrong, there will be punishment, this is a trap_.

Years later and he’d worked on nothing except Calcinators since that day. Hux was right about one thing, he was an expert on them now. He was the Calcinator Guy! Calcinator acting up? Send Matt! He’s the best!

He _hated_ it.

Just because he could now rewire a Calcinator in his sleep didn’t mean he enjoyed doing it. They were fiddly and delicate and required such a careful touch, and Matt was not built for that kind of work. But that’s what he did now, all day every day, thanks to _Hux_. It was frustrating. Sometimes he got the urge to destroy an entire panel of wiring, maybe set fire to it, or melt everything with a lightsaber the way he’d seen Kylo Ren do once. But he was not Kylo Ren. He had no authority. No power. If he dared to destroy something on purpose he’d be imprisoned for sure, maybe even killed. He wasn’t sure which, but he’d never risk finding out. Instead he bottled up all his rage, letting it boil beneath his skin like molten lead. His only small release was complaining loudly to anyone who would listen.

There was no one to complain to at the moment, though. He was alone in the corridor, opening a wall panel to rewire his _thirteenth-kriffing-Calcinator_ today and he was so angry he nearly sheared the heads off of the bolts with his wrench as he removed them. The shift manager was just around the corner and he could easily yell loudly enough for her to hear his complaints, but he’d been reprimanded for being disruptive once today already so he bit his tongue and stayed quiet. He’d only been working for a few minutes when a crisp, direct voice that could only belong to an officer echoed around the corner to him.

_Stupid kriffing officers think they’re so much better than the rest of us-_

“I need to see your maintenance logs for General Hux’s command shuttle.”

“Of course, Sir… Is there a problem?”

“The General’s shuttle... _malfunctioned_. He and Lord Ren were the only survivors of the resulting crash. I need the names of the last men to do any work on it.”

Matt went still. He thought his heart may have even stopped momentarily as fear gripped him, replacing all his anger like ice poured straight into his veins. As far as he knew, no one had touched the command shuttle for weeks. No one except for him. He’d rewired the Calcinators on it just yesterday. And he’d complained about the General the entire time.

They were going to blame him. There’s no way they could possibly think it was anyone else’s fault.

He stared at the wiring in front of him without seeing it, pulse racing, body going numb. He didn’t even realize he’d dropped his wrench until the sound of it clattering to the floor shocked him back to his senses.

Moments later a pair of officers accompanied by a small band of troopers rounded the corner to apprehend him, but an open panel and a fallen wrench were all they found.  
*

*  
William was deeply focused, reviewing security coding for Starkiller Base’s surveillance network, when he was startled by the sound of the door opening unexpectedly. He was almost never disturbed during his shift unless there was some sort of emergency, and even then his security systems usually alerted him to it beforehand. His entire body tensed on instinct, expecting pain or some other terrible thing, but-- It was only Matt.

He relaxed immediately, a timid smile creeping into his expression until he took in Matt’s appearance-- leaning against the door, glasses askew, out of breath like he’d just escaped a pack of hungry rathtars-- and his expression fell again. “What’s happened?”

“I’m in trouble, Techie.”

“What? Why--” An new security alert flashed on his screen and he turned to read the feed, his eyes going wide. “Oh… _Oh_.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Tech, I _swear_.”

“A-are you-- you really didn’t do it? I know how you feel about General--”

“Of course not! Kylo Ren was on that shuttle! I would never!”

“Oh…” William would never claim to understand Matt’s slavish devotion to Lord Ren, but it was certainly enough to convince him of Matt’s innocence in this case.

Matt clutched the front of his coveralls with one massive hand, seemingly desperate for something to hang onto as his legs failed to support him and he sank to the floor. "I'm dead. Kriff, I'm so sorry! I should never have come here. Everyone knows we're together, and now you'll probably get in trouble, too, because of me!"

"Oh, no-no, it's--" William slid out of his chair to join Matt on the floor, taking Matt's free hand in both of his and squeezing tight. "It's okay, we-...we'll think of something."

"Kylo Ren could save me. He can read minds! He could see in my mind that I'm innocent if they'd just take me to him…" even as he said it, his lower lip trembling and eyes welling with tears, they both knew it was a desperate hope. All evidence pointed to Matt, so when he was found he was more likely to be executed than interrogated. “If I could just _explain_… I mean, what kind of idiot would I have to be to sabotage a ship when my name is the only one on the maintenance log!?”

“You wouldn’t, I know that,” William said. He kissed the back of Matt’s hand, then moved closer to kiss his unruly hair in an attempt to soothe him. Matt was as good as dead if he was caught, so there was no option but to leave. William was no stranger to escaping difficult circumstances. More loyal to his own survival than almost anything else, he'd managed to leave a hostile organization once before and he could do it again. “Matt, we have to go. We have to get away from here before they find you.”

Matt sniffled once and looked up to meet William’s eyes, scared and pleading. “You’ll go with me? But where will we go?”

“Of course I’ll go with you. I wouldn’t stay here without you.” He kissed the back of Matt’s hand again, then bit his lower lip in thought. There were a lot of places they could go, but getting there would be the hard part. “What if we found the Resistance? We could trade information for sanctuary.”

“You want to _defect?_ No! I can’t- I _won’t_ do that! I’m loyal to the Order! I--”

“Okay, okay! That was only one option, there are other places we can go. Plenty of places to disappear. We’ll think of something else.” He had no immediate plan B, but he couldn’t risk Matt getting worked up right now. There was no time for it. “First things first, we have to get to the hangar bay and steal a ship.”

“Can you pilot a ship? Because I’m not trained as a pilot.”

“No, I can’t, but I have something that can. Hang on-” William got up and opened his locker, digging through disorganized scraps of machinery and wiring until he found the processor chip he was looking for. “Here! An astromech droid AI. I salvaged it years ago. I can install it into the autopilot and it can take us wherever we want to go.”

Matt stood, his expression strangely unreadable as he breathed deeply through his nose for a moment. “Okay.”

William smiled weakly. There were still a lot of variables to consider, and they could easily be killed in their attempt to escape. It would be a lie to say he wasn’t terrified, but it was worth risking his life to save Matt. Fortunately, there was no one on the base better equipped to avoid security than him. “Okay. Follow me.”  
*

*  
Bootheels clacked on the polished floor as Hux stalked into the control room. All things considered, he was in a pleasant mood. He may have nearly died multiple times in the past 24 hours, but as a result he now had an opportunity to take a bit of very long-awaited revenge. But right now, he was annoyed. “Honestly, this base is swarming with my troops. How is it _none_ of them are capable of laying eyes on _one_ Radar Technician?”

“There are gaps in the surveillance system, General. It seems several cameras have been taken offline.”

“That should hardly matter, should it? If he’s planning to avoid capture, we know where he’s going. There’s only one path to escape if he doesn’t want to freeze to death in the wilderness. Cut off all access to the hangar bay.”

“Yes, General!”

The bustle of subordinates scrambling to obey his orders never failed to please him. It even took some of the sting out of his annoyance.

“General, there’s an unauthorized freighter departing from the hangar bay!”

“Then close the door! Don’t let him escape!” Even as he said it, he could see the ship leaving the bay. So much for his good mood. At least the ship couldn’t break atmosphere as long as the shields were up.

“The shield is down, General!”

_Damn_. “Shoot him down!”

He held his breath as he watched the red beams of the ground cannons slice through the sky on the viewscreen, but then there was a bright flash of an explosion as one of the beams connected.

He allowed himself a victorious grin as the light from the burning shrapnel faded from the sky. _That’s one execution down. One more to go_.  
*

*  
“You think I can’t see that ship is damaged? It’s not worth half what you’re asking!”

“The engine works. The hyperdrive works. The shields work. The weapons work. Everything that matters is intact!”

“But it’s _damaged_.”

Matt took an aggressive step forward, looming over the merchant threateningly with his massive frame. “The _damage_ is _cosmetic!_”

The merchant shrank back, hand reaching for his blaster just as William stepped between them. “Ah, n-now, that won’t be necessary. I’m sure we can reach an agreement…”

A few heated minutes later found the two of them gathering their meager possessions from the stolen freighter and leaving it to the hands of its new owner, now a few hundred credits richer with the access codes for a smaller freighter with no ties to the First Order. Matt wasn’t happy. “He still gave us way less than it’s worth.”

“I know, but he probably figured out that it’s stolen. We’re lucky he even agreed to take it.”

“You have our pilot?”

“Right here,” William held up the processor chip before placing it safely back in his pocket.

Matt nodded stiffly, then reached to take William’s hand as they walked across the yard to their new ship. “Really, the damage to the hull was minimal considering jettisoned explosives went off right outside the cargo hold.”

William let out a skittish little giggle, feeling giddy despite everything. “It really was close, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. But I guess we got away. Just hope they never find that kriffing ship or they’ll know we’re not dead.”

“We’ll worry about that if it ever happens.”

They boarded their new ship, William going to the cockpit to install the astromech AI and link it to the autopilot system while Matt went to put away their belongings. The ship was small, but it looked comfortable enough. It was still more spacious than the living spaces either of them were accustomed to, anyway. Once he’d tucked all their belongings away in a small cargo hold above the single bunk, Matt joined William in the cockpit and took a seat in the co-pilot’s chair. “So where do we go now? What are we supposed to do?”

William typed in the last few commands and smiled at Matt when the ship’s engines hummed to life. “Whatever we want.”

After a moment, Matt hesitantly smiled back. “I’m not sure what I want, but I know what I _don’t_ want to do.”

“What’s that?”

“I never want to rewire another Calcinator as long as I live.”


End file.
